


Zero-Sum

by thilesluna



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 13:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11403288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thilesluna/pseuds/thilesluna
Summary: Angus drinks the Voidfish ichor. Angus remembers and loses more than he gets back.





	Zero-Sum

They talk about what the Voidfish makes you forget more often than anything else. They talk about the things that you will lose and the things that the people you know and love will lose because that _loss_ is usually the worst-case scenario for everyone.

 

Angus sits alone in his assigned Bureau of Balance room and traces the small dark stain on his fancy boy shirt and suffers through the remembering.

 

 _Was it better this way?_ he wonders idly. _Is it better to know the things that had been gone for years?_

 

He remembers his grandfather’s name. He remembers that his grandfather was instrumental in the attempted recovery of a powerful magic item that Angus now knows to be the Philosopher’s stone. The man was so embroiled in the search that his name had been erased from the world and Angus knows now that his forgetful moments and the way he sometimes struggled to be fully lucid were side effects of the Voidfish’s powers. Angus mourns the loss of a life of a man who is still living.

 

It’s hard too, to think and realize and _reconcile_ the fact that despite everything he’s known for the largest part of his life, he had a family.

 

It comes in tiny waves that make him dizzy, more so even than setting foot on the not-moon. He remembers being sent away to school, far from his hometown because he was so bright even as a very small boy. He was sent to a school for gifted children with a suitcase larger than he was, stuffed full of fancy outfits and the first book in a new series about a boy detective that his aunt thought he would enjoy.

 

He remembers his aunt’s name and it nearly knocks him to his knees.

 

Angus barely makes it to the trash can next to Johan’s desk before he throws up the meager lunch he’d managed before Miss Carey had found him in Neverwinter.

 

Johan is clearly unsure of what to do but mutters something encouraging while patting Angus on the back carefully. The boy smiles after wiping at his mouth with his sleeve. “I’m alright, sir,” he lies. “I’ll be okay.”

 

It’s later in his room, tracing the B.O.B. sigil on his new metal bracer that Angus begins to unpack what he’s remembered.

 

He is the youngest of three children. His parents are a banker and a teacher, respectively.

 

 _Was_ , he thinks suddenly. _Were_.

 

Angus buries his head in his hands and attempts to make sense of all the things that he knew before and knows again now.

 

His older brother was named Jacob, after his father and his older sister was called Peony, after his mother’s favorite flowers. His mother taught at fantasy high school and his father was a manager in the bank of the town where they lived. His aunt, his mother’s sister, lived with them as well. She was only 18, much younger than his mother but they were the best of friends and Aunt Claire was his favorite.

 

Angus pitches forward off his bunk to throw up again, this time nothing but bile. It makes his throat hurt and his head ache.

 

So much of his life was _gone_ for so long and now it’s back and he—part of him wishes it were gone again.

 

It hurts so much to think of his family and his home and to remember the way he was taken aside, pulled from class so that the headmistress could explain as best she could, that his home didn’t _exist_ any more. Leilon had been destroyed. It had burned to a circle of black glass and there were no survivors of the blast.

 

Angus was so small and suddenly so afraid and so very, _very_ alone.

 

He doesn’t know when he forgot. He’s not sure the date when the Voidfish erased his past but he remembers that before it did, the only solace he could find was in the Caleb Cleveland book tucked into his suitcase. He would curl around the book in the dark of night, tracing a finger idly over the inscription from his aunt inside the front cover.

 

There was a long stretch of time where he couldn’t read the inscription. For quite some time he assumed that it was childish scribbling on the inside of a used book.

 

Angus finds the book now, the cover worn and the spine creased. He digs it from the bottom of his small trunk of items and holds it on his lap.

 

Angus sits so very still with the book laid across his thighs. He runs his fingers along the places where the cover has torn or parts of the picture have been rubbed away. He tries his best to stop the way his hands are trembling.

 

Even when he forgot, when he didn't remember his family, he'd had this book. With the reset of his history, the book had always been a constant and had been what spurred him into detective work in the first place. He didn’t know where it came from, but the book has always been the most important thing he's ever owned.

 

Now that he’s drunk the Voidfish’s ichor, he knows what the inscription says already. For a moment, Angus feels like if he just doesn't look, maybe he can pretend for a little while longer that his family is still out there somewhere and that what he’s remembered isn’t _true_.

 

He opens the book and for the first time in years, the words scrawled onto the inside cover are legible.

 

_To my favorite boy detective,_

_I saw this new book and thought of you! I hope you have the best time at your new school even though I will miss you while you’re gone._

_Can’t wait for you to come home and tell me all about how you solved the case before the kid in the book!_

_I love you,_

_Auntie Claire_

 

Angus reads it twice more and then abruptly slams the cover shut. He throws the book, sends it flying as far away from him as he can and it collides with the door as a _crash_ echoes through his sparse room. It’s overwhelming. There’s so many things popping off and around in his head and he doesn’t know how to process any of them. He’s horribly sad and unexpectedly angry but worst of all is the _guilt_.

 

How could he have forgotten the people who meant the most to him in the entire world? Magic or not, shouldn’t he have loved them _enough_ to remember? How many times had his thoughts set off the tiny lights in the Voidfish? How long did it take for him to stop _trying_?

 

He sits for a long time with his knees tucked up to his chest and his hands in his hair, thinking about all the things he’s gotten back that he wished were still lost.

 

There’s a knock on his door nearly an hour later and Angus shuffles over, finally picking up the book and dusting off the worn cover. When the door swings open he’s surprised to see Magnus and Merle on the other side.

 

“Hello, sirs,” he says, trying to put on a bright smile. Merle eyes him seriously and then pats Magnus on the arm.

 

“Come on then,” he says, waving a hand at Angus.

 

“Uh—um, come on where?” Angus asks.

 

Magnus chuckles and claps a hand onto Angus’s back. “To the cafeteria!” The hand remains and he steers the small boy out of his room and into the hall. “Vernon makes the best ‘post-ichor’ milkshakes you’ve ever had.”

 

“I’ve never had a ‘post-ichor’ milkshake,” Angus replies, gripping his book tightly and allowing himself to be led.

 

“That’s what makes them the best,” Merle answers. “Duh! Because they’re the only ones in the world.”

 

Magnus leans down and whispers to Angus, “As far as milkshakes go, they’re mid-level at best, but no one else knows how to make them here so we like to build old Vern up about it.”

 

“I understand sir,” Angus says, nodding solemnly.

 

“Whatcha got there, Ango?”

 

He looks down at the book in his hands and struggles to find the words to explain. How do you tell someone that you’ve just remembered that your whole family is dead and a ratty book is all you have left of them? He holds the book tight to his chest. “It’s—it was a gift from someone who I—I guess someone who I loved a lot.”

 

Magnus tilts his head curiously and Merle asks, “Someone you _guess_ you loved?”

 

“It’s—I feel like I can’t—I didn’t love them enough if I lost them for so long,” he says, at a loss for words to describe the roiling feeling deep in his gut. “I forgot so many people,” he says quietly. “And even now that I remember, they’re still gone.”

 

Magnus stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t fight the kind of power the Voidfish has,” he says, voice even and kind. “Even if you loved them more than anything in this plane, it wouldn’t make a difference.”

 

Merle sighs from where he stopped a few feet ahead. “Besides, you remember them now. You can honor that even if you can’t—hell, even if you can’t see ‘em in person, they’re not really gone until no one remembers them anymore.” He stops and scratches his head, trying to think of the right thing to say. “So if you really think about it, you rememberin’ them is keeping them going even after they’re gone.”

 

Angus blinks and looks at each of them in turn. He doesn’t cry but he feels the weight crushing down on his chest lessen a little bit. “Thank you, sirs,” he says quietly.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Merle replies with a roll of his eyes. “Let’s get goin’ before Taako takes all the chocolate shakes.” Magnus grins down at Angus, bending over just slightly to scoop the boy up into a piggyback ride. Angus makes a surprised noise and Magnus laughs as he sets off at a run, plowing Merle out of the way. The dwarf brandishes a fist and begins to waddle after them.

 

Angus clutches tight to Magnus’s back, his book crushed between them—old family and new—and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Liiiiiisten. I love my Ango and I love giving him a good family but I also clearly love immediately taking away that first family so I can give him another one.
> 
> find me on tumblr @geargieee


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